10/29/2008

10/28/2008

Unbelievably, there were Two bids on D-man rfa Staios' services, by the Shadowmen and the Bladerunnners... Well, the bladerunners crushed the Shadowmen [again] on the week and continue to trash them in the standings.

ERGO...Staios is awarded to the Shadowmen [for now] They drop Morris-PHX D RFA INJ to the Waiver wire for Week 5 bids.

Meanwhile, P3 RW Kessel-BST was brought up by the Great Whites and RW from NJ Langenbrunner RFA was deep sixed to the Waiver wire for Week 5 bids.

Therefore 2 rfas for the bidding on the Waiver wire for Week 5 bids with line-ups:

10/27/2008

Once upon a time Craig Ludwig was an anomaly. He wore extra padding under his shin guards, and his legs looked like the lower body equivalent of Popeye's forearms.

Why? Because as a defensive specialist he had made himself into the teams designated shot blocker.

Sure enough late in games you could count on Ludwig to throw himself in front of some MacInnis cannon drive that no other sentient being would even consider trying to stop. And an otherwise medium grade defenseman made himself invaluable.

Nowadays of course even the rawest rookie is expected to hurl his armor coated body in front of every shot. When Edmonton marched unexpectedly to the Cup finals a couple years back one thing everyone remarked on was how few shots were getting through to Roloson. The reason was simple, every member of the Oilers blocked every shot every time they could. They flooped worse then the GM of the Ramapithicines playing soccer.

Does anyone else recall how mechanically timed the Oilers were? How they lay down like bowling pins every time a shot was lined up?

10/25/2008

10/24/2008

Sorry there were no stats yesterday. I'm in Calgary for a couple of days on work-related matters but these are updated as of last night's games. It was really good to hook up with Brian last night but, alas, we couldn't come up with a trade :-)

I made a mistake with the last stats I had posted (missing one of Bob's players previous week's points) but it is now corrected. If anyone spots any other problems with the stats - let me know.

The season is early but the Lost Boys had a relatively good night and move up the standings into 5th. Not earth-shattering news but its always better to be in the top-half of the pool as opposed to the bottom half.

In completely self-interested news - M.Kiprusoff had a good night last night allowing only one goal for his best game of the season. If holding the high-octane Caps (of Ovechkin, Semin and Green fame) to a single tally is a sign that Kipper's annual October funk is coming to a close Flame fans, and Highlander fans, couldn't be happier.

As always, let me know if you spot any discrepancies and please, if you can, detail what you think I should be showing you as having as that may go a long way to getting the problem identified.

10/20/2008

Sorry for the lack of updates on the weekend but time was not my friend.

I noticed a few errors in the goaltending stats, as well as a couple of differences that Brian noticed, but think I have things ironed out for now. Still, if you notice any discrepencies - let me know.

Congrats to Chris and Darrell for monster weeks this past week and congrat so Chris for ending a week atop the standings, for the first time if I'm not mistaken.

Brian has already noted a couple of possible discrepencies - which we are trying to track down - so please double check your own stats if nothing else. Still, a week and a half in and we are now up and running so I'm pretty pleased. As for the standing of my Highlanders, well that might be a different story.

In Court most of today so it's unlikely I'll be able to get much more done on Challenge Cup, Omnivore or moving to Yahoo as a stats source but I'll keep plugging away. Good omen for the Highlanders - Kipper's trending in the right direction 6 GA, 5 GA, 4 GA and now two straight games against Edmonton!

Sorry for the delay (but remember, last year I didn't get these up until Week 4).

I hope to have up to the minute stats by later in the week - possibly by later today - but here are the stats as of last Sunday.

The NHL has thrown us another stats curve, they are now posting PIM on a different page than they give out pts and +/- (something I noted earlier) and now they are NOT including goalie MinutesPlayed in any of their goalie stats! This has required me to calculate the MinutesPlayed backwards by pulling them out of the GAA using GA. Not ideal.

Bob has pointed out that Yahoo Sports has their stats set out as has traditionally been the case - not sure if they are getting a different stats pack from the NHL or if they are just converting it all in-house, but I have not set up my spreadsheet to use this source just yet - though I am seriously considering it.

Anyhow, thought you would want to know where we are right now.

As always, if you note any diffences with your own calculations - let me know.

I'll leave it to someone else (Bob, if you like) to figure out the Waiver Wire winners.

I hope to have the Challenge Cup and Omnivore standings up soon as well but for now this will have to suffice.

10/08/2008

Slaving away on getting the spreadsheet up and running. Things are going well but expect some delays for run of the mill stuff - like entering everyone's line-up (thanks again to Bob for not trading his entire team prior to the start of the season - much appreciated).

One hic-up I was not expecting was that the NHL has, apparently, re-designed their stats package that is sent out to TSN, ESPN, and CBS-Sportsline. They have removed the PIM (and other stats) from the main stats page. This will require me to create a whole new series of stats pages for the spreadsheet devoted to PIM (as I already do for goalie stats). Not difficult in theory, just cumbesome.

I'm hoping that this is just a temporary thing until the North American leg opens up but it looks pretty well established on the NHL.com site so we may be stuck with it.

Anyhow, it may delay me a little longer than I thought but I'll keep you posted.

10/01/2008

Week One starts this weekend with the European games on Saturday October 4th and Sunday October 5th. Week One "resumes" with the North American games on Thursday October 9th and continues until Sunday October 12th.

I would love to say that I'm all ready to go with my stats sheet for this weekend's games but, well, I'm not. I'm hoping that I will be ready to go once the North American puck hits the ice but no guarantees.

That said, the Challenge Cup games are also set to get going with the following Week One Neutral Site Games on tap: